Charlie's Greatest Achievement
by Sehanine
Summary: Distracting a dragon is dangerous business


AN: Written for the QLFC round 2.

Team: Pride of Portree

Position: Seeker

* * *

Dragons were dangerous. Of course, that was part of the beauty of them in Charlie's eyes. Most people said he was crazy for choosing this career, but he preferred to think of himself as daring.

He hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor for nothing, after all.

The biggest problem with dealing with dragons is that nothing kept them down for long. You could stun them, if you had a team to back you up, but it only lasted a few minutes at best. You could kill them, if absolutely necessary, but of course that was rarely the aim at the reserve. You could distract them, if you didn't mind potentially becoming lunch…

It was a problem that people had been working on for decades, ever since the reservation opened. Usually the keepers' job could be done without getting up close and personal with the dragons, but occasionally it was necessary.

Unfortunately, 'occasionally' happened only two days after Charlie arrived.

A Chinese Fireball named Minerva (Charlie suspected another ex-Hogwarts student had named her) had laid a wonderful clutch of eggs. The breed was struggling, and it had been decided that raising the hatchlings by hand would be beneficial, as the mothers had an unfortunate habit of consuming their young.

The keepers had no idea how to get past Minerva to retrieve the eggs. Various options had been discussed. The stunners wouldn't keep her down for long enough; the eggs needed to be retrieved by hand and due to their weight it would take a while. Killing was, of course, out of the question. Distraction was looking like the best option, but how to stop her from firstly, killing the distraction and secondly, getting bored and returning to her nest?

The attempt was to be made after a week. A group of crazy-or-brave volunteers were being trained to apparate under pressure, in case they needed a quick escape route. Charlie was not one of them. Oh, he had tried to volunteer. He wanted to help, but his superiors had shot him down quickly. He was too young, hadn't had enough experience yet to be trusted with such an important task.

Their words didn't sit well with Charlie. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be hailed as the saviour, the reason that the attempt succeeded. He never considered that he might fail.

His superiors did not waver. So Charlie planned.

He had almost been put into Ravenclaw, and for good reason. He had worked closely with Professor Flitwick in his later years, studying Charm development alongside his regular studies, mostly just for fun. His proficiency in the subject had surprised his teacher, but Flitwick had been all too happy to have a willing student to work with. A charm probably wouldn't be enough to solve this problem, but the theory could be applied to any type of spell.

Thinking about the issue, Charlie began to make notes, arithmantic calculations scrawled on scraps of parchment alongside a list of traits of the Chinese Fireball.

The one that stood out to Charlie was their weak eyes. That's where they were all taught to aim should they need to kill a dragon. Their hides were resistant to magic, but their eyes were more easily affected. There was something important in that fact, Charlie was sure, but he was struggling to find a way to apply it to the problem.

It wasn't until a few days later that he found the solution in the form of one of the other trainees, a rather scatterbrained man named Ben.

"Hey, Charlie, I don't suppose you've seen my glasses anywhere, have you?" Ben asked, his voice muffled by the bed he was currently halfway under.

"No, sorry mate, not since…" Charlie trailed off. An idea was forming in the back of his mind.

Ben was absolutely useless without the glasses he regularly misplaced. His eyesight was terrible, and he could do nothing until he found them again.

"Perhaps, if I found something that could make them blind…" Charlie muttered as he rushed off to grab his notebook, abandoning Ben in his moment of need.

One sleepless night, many calculations and a lot of waving his wand around in random patterns, Charlie believed he had something. It would need testing, but combined with the distraction techniques already in place, it might just be enough to prevent the Fireball from returning to her nest before the heist was complete.

"I'm thinking of calling it the Conjunctivitis Curse," Charlie said, as he finished explaining the spell to his boss. "It doesn't really cause conjunctivitis, but I like the alliteration, and 'Temporary Blindness Curse' just doesn't have the same ring to it."

The attempt to steal the eggs was pushed back a week, while Charlie's curse was tested thoroughly to ensure it would not harm the dragons permanently, nor cause any undue threat to the team tasked with distracting it.

Eventually, it was decided that some volunteers would lure the dragon away with food, and Charlie himself would have the honour of casting the curse. Hopefully, the mother would be unable to focus enough to find her way back to the nest, giving the egg thieves plenty of time to execute their part of the plan.

Thankfully, everything went perfectly. Three eggs were placed into a magical fire that night, and would hopefully hatch shortly after. The babies could be raised and put into a breeding program, and the population could be saved. Of course, Charlie couldn't take the credit for the revival of a once-hopeless breed, but that wouldn't stop him from privately congratulating himself on the achievement, and bragging about it every chance he got.


End file.
